Drip, Drip, Drip - How Debate About Our Right to Privacy Was Drowned Out By the Sound of Reshuffling

15/07/2014 17:02
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Updated
14 September 2014

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Karla McLaren
Government and Political Relations Manager, Amnesty International UK

Oh the irony that social media users are currently so distracted by the Prime Minister's chess board manoeuvring of Ministers ahead of next year's election, that they aren't talking about a law (being debated today) which would justify the government's ability to monitor everything they do...on social media!

Amnesty and other human rights groups have serious concerns about the content of DRIP. But ultimately it is impossible to know what the full implications are without meaningful scrutiny, which is impossible within the few hours being set aside.

What we do know is that the government claims DRIP is necessary - urgently necessary - due to a European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling that previous data retention legislation was unlawful.

While we agree that the UK government certainly needs new and clearer laws on how its intelligence agencies carry out surveillance, DRIP fails to address the reasons the ECJ struck down the previous law in the first place.

Worse still, the government's justification for pushing through DRIP as emergency legislation, taking away the opportunity for proper and effective parliamentary (and public) scrutiny, is flawed. The government has known about the ECJ judgment since April.

And since the government has achieved cross-party agreement on DRIP - between the three main parties at least (read: shady backroom deals between the leaders) - discussions must have been taking place over a significant period of time.

So it is somewhat of a BIG coincidence that what little debate DRIP is receiving is taking place on one of the busiest political news days this year, if not this parliamentary term. It's another BIG coincidence that DRIP is being pushed through right before Parliament goes on holiday for six weeks... little chance of the time for debate being extended then.

How unfortunate. A cynic might even suggest the government planned it that way.